Fragmented - Android Developer Podcast 254 - 8× faster 5× memory savings with Dan Rusu’s Immutable Arrays
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Dec 24, 2024 Dan Rusu, a backend engineer and creator of the Immutable Arrays library for Kotlin, discusses his quest for performance improvements in Kotlin/Android apps. He shares how his library achieves significant speed boosts and lower memory usage, thanks to concepts of immutability and effective benchmarking. The conversation explores the impact of primitive versus reference types, the challenges of adopting immutable arrays, and the advantages of using Kotlin in backend development. Dive into the exciting world of enhanced programming efficiency!
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Dan's Kotlin Journey
- Dan Rusu, primarily a backend developer, became interested in Kotlin in 2017 after Google's announcement.
- He was impressed by Kotlin's design and its ability to prevent common Java defects, leading him to champion Kotlin adoption at Oracle and FAIR.
Read-Only vs. Immutable Lists
- Kotlin lists are not truly immutable, only read-only, as they can be mutated by casting to ArrayList.
- This contrasts with immutable arrays, which offer true immutability and performance benefits.
Memory Efficiency of Arrays
- Lists, using generics, store objects, leading to autoboxing and memory overhead for primitives.
- Immutable arrays store primitives directly, resulting in significant memory savings, sometimes up to 5x.